the clintons and their racism

"Information
Clearing House"
- "Counterpunch
"-Former U.S.
President Bill Clinton has been making the rounds to
defend his policies while in office to support his
wife’s run for President. The close working
relationship that he and Hillary Clinton have infers
a symbiosis that other ‘First Couples’ wouldn’t be
jointly held accountable for. And in contrast to the
oft offered argument that Mrs. Clinton isn’t
responsible for her husband’s policies, she has
taken responsibility (links below) for her role in
developing, promoting and implementing the omnibus
crime bill of 1994 that led to the massive buildout
of the carceral state (mass incarceration) and for
her use of the term ‘super-predator’ as racist
slander against Black children.When Bill
Clinton
was recently confronted by Black Lives Matter
protestors he reiterated the talking points that he
(and Hillary) used in 1994, that drug ‘gang’
violence was real, that his (and Hillary’s) interest
was humanitarian, that many Blacks supported the
crime bill and that the growth in incarceration
rates for people of color was an unintended
consequence. Left unsaid was that the crime bill was
but one part of the Clinton’s opportunistic
‘dog-whistle’ strategy, that the policies tied to
more than three centuries of racial repression in
the U.S. and that regardless of whether the Clintons
fully thought through the implications, they were
willing to gamble with the lives of millions of
Black and Brown youth for political gain.
Contemporary political rhetoric ‘works,’ to the
extent that it does, by erecting walls between
ideas, acts and policies that might otherwise be
plausibly related. Basic physical security, as in
freedom from violence for one’s person, family,
neighbors and community, is a human right in a most
basic sense. It is also the human right that has
been most tightly circumscribed throughout American
history. The American ‘story,’ as in the history
written by the dominant culture, has been of White
America ‘under attack’ from hostile indigenous
peoples and inner-city ‘criminals’ whereas the
overwhelming preponderance of actual violence has
been committed against the indigenous population,
kidnapped Africans held in slavery and their
descendants.This same
disjoint ‘history’ is true of American military
adventures overseas, always undertaken in official
explanations to benefit those being bombed,
sanctioned, starved, imprisoned and forced to
migrate. Bill Clinton spent most of his two terms in
office bombing and sanctioning Iraq to ‘contain’
former CIA ‘asset’ Saddam Hussein as Mr. Hussein
continued to eat well and sleep comfortably at
night. It was the Iraqis who were least able to
defend themselves who were bombed, starved, and from
whom life-saving medicines and medical care were
withheld. Somewhere between 300,000 and
500,000 innocent Iraqis— mostly women and
children, were killed by Mr. Clinton’s bombs and
sanctions.

This
context is necessary because when Bill Clinton chose
to
defend
his and
Hillary Clinton’s omnibus crime bill and its
social consequences he framed it, once again, as a
domestic ‘humanitarian intervention.’ The localized
‘truth’ that Mr. Clinton used to do so— that freedom
from violence is a basic right that ‘even’ the
communities subsequently targeted with repressive
policing, racially biased drug laws and mass
incarceration deserved, removes the broader context
of American racial history. Alternatively, without
an antique-progressive racial or genetic theory of
‘crime,’ why would liberal Democrats choose police
repression and creation of a carceral state before
first resolving the political and economic exclusion
that correlate 100% with the communities suffering
from ‘internal’ violence?

the racism is rank and, of course, offensive.

even more offensive?

bob somerby's near daily attempts to justify it and insist it wasn't racism.

Today, he offered specifics from Baghdad, after sneaking into the country of Iraq early this morning.

Euan McKirdy, Jim Sciutto and Jamie Crawford (CNN) report
Carter announced 217 more US troops would be sent into Iraq "which will
raise the U.S. troop presence in Iraq to more than 4,000." In
addition, the US "will also offer aviation support and provide force
protection, Carter said, during an unannounced visit to Iraq. The
U.S. will additionally provide Army Apache attack helicopters --
something the U.S. had been pushing for months in the face of resistance
from the Iraqi government."

The additional 217 troops are the latest in a series of incremental
additions to the U.S. military effort in Iraq. MacFarland left the door
open to the possibility that even more U.S. troops would be sent to Iraq
if the new additional forces prove "insufficient" to defeating the
Islamic State group in Mosul. If that happens, "we'll have another
discussion about it," he said.

McFarland is the top US commander in Iraq.

And the number just keeps slowly moving upward. No one's supposed to note that.

For Iraqi officials, the thing that will get the most complaints about
the new deal will be the aspect that includes the Kurds. BBC NEWS explains:The US also plans to give Kurdish Peshmerga forces, which are
fighting IS on the ground, more than $400m (£280m; €350m) in assistance.
Co-operation between the two forces was evident on Monday when
Kurdish officials said they had killed a senior IS commander in the
south of Mosul in a joint raid with US special forces.

Though the issue of joint raids did not come up today, the issue of aid
to the KRG did at the State Dept briefing moderated by John Kirby:

QUESTION: Thank you. So Secretary Carter was in Baghdad today
and he said – he decided that there will $415 million for the Kurds for
the Peshmerga. Was the State Department involved in the process of
making this decision?MR KIRBY: We were certainly – there was a great deal of
interagency coordination that was done in the – in arriving at this
decision. And we’re fully supportive, of course.QUESTION: Okay. And another question. The State – the
Department of Defense says these funds will be provided by – with –
through the Government of Iraq. This is money; it’s not weapons. I just
want to know factually whether the – physically the money goes through a
bank account in Baghdad and then to Erbil, or how’s that work?MR KIRBY: I have no idea how the actual funds get released and
transferred, but everything – you speak about it as if it’s something
so unique. It all goes to assistance that the United States is providing
to the Government of Iraq as it conducts a campaign plan against Daesh
inside their country. And as we’ve said before, everything, all our aid
and assistance, will continue to go through the government, the central
government of Iraq in Baghdad. Now, exactly how the electrons gets
transferred and the actual dollar figures, I don’t have that level of
specificity, and frankly, it’s not relevant. Everything is being done in
coordination with Prime Minister Abadi’s government.QUESTION: Well, because the weapons, they kind of can go to
Baghdad for inspection, but I just want to know whether the money can go
to Baghdad and then --MR KIRBY: Well, I would – if you need to know that specific
about – information, I would refer you to DOD. I simply don’t have that
level of information.QUESTION: And will it – sorry, one more.MR KIRBY: Of course.QUESTION: Just a factual question. Will you send the money in cash as you had after 2003? Because that’s what you did.MR KIRBY: You really need to talk to DOD. I don’t have that
level of detail. This was an announcement by the Defense Department, and
I refer you to them for more detail about it.QUESTION: It’s important, really. Once the money is sent in
cash, it can get around to different destinations than the one that you
intend.

MR KIRBY: I honestly don’t know the answer to your question. You really should go to DOD for that level of detail on that.

Kirby claims, "We were certainly -- there was a great deal of
interagency coordination that was done in the -- in arriving at this
decision. And we’re fully supportive, of course." Yet asked a basic
question, he's so clueless, he rushes to defer to the Defense Dept.

That tells you how little State actually was involved in the decision process.

Which isn't surprising because State would have killed that aspect if it
had a choice. It's the Defense Dept -- and only the Defense Dept --
that's appreciated the work done by Kurdish forces. It's the Defense
Dept that has repeatedly advocated for the Kurds when offering testimony
to the US Congress.

US 'boots on the ground.'B-b-b-but Barack swore that would never happen.

And, of course, June 14, 2014, US President Barack Obama declared,
"American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq, but we will
help Iraqis as they take the fight to terrorists who threaten the Iraqi
people, the region, and American interests as well."

So many broken promises.

So many broken promises.

Speaking of broken promises, Tom Hayden.

Remember when this started with 300 or so US 'advisors' and Tom insisted we must fight against creeping escalation?

Today, his only concern is serving on the DNC (which is most likely why he endorsed Hillary last week).

Hayden, in short, personifies a certain strand of American
middle-class left politics, by this time a fundamentally conservative
and establishment strand.In relation to Obama’s Afghanistan
policy, Hayden enters stage “left” to reinforce the illusions sown by
the president and shore up support for the administration. His piece is
aimed at smothering the outrage felt by those who believed candidate
Obama’s promises in 2008. Hayden’s method of choice is to congratulate
antiwar voters and activists on having supposedly forced the current
administration’s hand in “quickening” the Afghan withdrawal.Thus,
Hayden asserts that Obama “is responding to massive public pressure for
rapid troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.” He declares, “We have
crossed the line into de-escalation.”The Nation
journalist goes on to claim that the scheduled withdrawals by the end of
2012 (which, of course, can be vetoed or altered by the military)
should make opponents of the war “feel a sense of gratification…about
contributing to the vast upswelling of public opinion against Iraq and
now Afghanistan… There is a magic about public opinion, which still
matters despite the shadows of authoritarianism all around.”

Hayden’s cynical article is a succession of attempts to wear down popular skepticism and anger about Obama’s Afghanistan policy.

Far from the whoring of Tom Hayden, Mark Thomson (TIME) offers:The incremental U.S. troop growth is more of a White House strategy
to wage war on the cheap --especially in a conflict that Obama hailed when
all U.S. troops finally came home at the end of 2011. Sen. John McCain,
the Arizona Republican who chairs the armed services committee, called
the latest deployment “the kind of grudging incrementalism that rarely
wins wars, but could certainly lose one.” It has led to a
fingers-crossed kind of fight, with the U.S. seeming to dispatch only
sufficient force to handle an immediate need, until it’s no longer
adequate—and then sending more. This tendency has generated ire among
some U.S. military commanders, but the top brass has gone along with
Obama’s desire to keep the U.S. military footprint in Iraq as small as
possible.“Back in Vietnam days, we called this ‘gradual escalation’—a
euphemism for trying harder when you don’t know exactly what you’re
trying to achieve,” says Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and
author of the just-released America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. “The approach failed then, but Obama appears determined to revive it.”

And Barack appears to be facing no real opposition.

The US Defense Dept announced today:

Strikes in IraqFighter, ground attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted
17 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s
government:-- Near Baghdadi, three strikes struck an ISIL weapons cache, an ISIL communications facility and an ISIL staging area.-- Near Fallujah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.-- Near Hit, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit.-- Near Kirkuk, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three ISIL vehicles.-- Near Kisik, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit,
destroyed three ISIL assembly areas and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit
and an ISIL rocket team.-- Near Mosul, four strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical
units; destroyed two ISIL mortar positions, two ISIL assembly areas, an
ISIL vehicle and an ISIL boat; and suppressed an ISIL rocket team.-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and an ISIL safe house.-- Near Sinjar, a strike suppressed an ISIL tactical unit.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in
counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a
strike.

A great deal of time by Barack is spent propping up Haider al-Abadi,
the latest exile that the US has installed a prime minister of Iraq.
Currently, Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr is
putting pressure on Parliament for them to approve Haider's new nominees
for a new Cabinet. But that pressure could easily flip and turn
against Haider. AFP's W.G. Dunlop Tweets:

Thousands held a sit-in on Monday near the
heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the parliament and government
offices, in support of Sadr's warning to the politicians."We're
waiting for what Sayyid Moqtada will say tomorrow,'' when the deadline
the cleric gave is up, said one of the demonstrators.

Remember all the hand wringing about others using child soldiers? Not the brave west, of course, but others?

Well while the US was lecturing, their partner the United Kingdom appears to have been sending child soldiers into Iraq. Alice Ross (GUARDIAN) reports:

A former senior director at a British firm says that it employed
mercenaries from Sierra Leone to work in Iraq because they were cheaper
than Europeans and did not check if they were former child soldiers.James Ellery, who was a director of Aegis Defence Services between
2005 and 2015, said that contractors had a “duty” to recruit from
countries such as Sierra Leone, “where there’s high unemployment and a decent workforce”, in order to reduce costs for the US presence in Iraq.

Oh, well, you say, this was the UK.

ADS had contracts in Iraq to protect US bases.

Lastly, activist and Academy Award winning actor Susan Sarandon is Marc Maron's guest on this week's (not safe for work unless you're using headphones) broadcast of WTF. Susan was also on THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW with actress Rose Byrne and director Lorene Scafaria -- Susan and Rose star in Lorene's THE MEDDLER. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles this Friday and then goes into wide release. Susan and Rose are wonderful and Casey Wilson fans should also be sure to check the film out.